I chose another word to carve into a small lino block today. I’d been playing around with lots of words and phrases that have become associated with the pandemic lockdown. But it isn’t just about choosing random text, but words that have some meaning and resonance for me. The first word I cut and printed onto a mask was “isolate” which was pretty much the first message of the lockdown. But I work part-time for a homelessness charity and as the weeks have gone by I have come to realise that for some people “isolate” has become “isolation” and is hard to cope with.

Many charities, alongside the statutory services, are working flat out to develop different, safe and effective ways of supporting the most vulnerable people in society. If you have some time to spare, please check out some of their websites to see what they do.

So after several days of cutting cloth, cutting blocks, printing and sewing here’s my first pandemic mask. I carved the word “isolate” into a little lino block as the basis for the work. I hope it will be the first of many.

I learnt as I went along. My sewing skills are rusty – so are some of my pins! I didn’t allow enough time for the ink to dry – it’s much quicker on paper.

I used my lovely hand cranked Edwardian Singer sewing machine, now an antique – it was made in 1904. It has this beautiful sphynx-like decoration. Gorgeous.

I’ve been thinking a lot since the lockdown started about doing some artwork based around the Covid19 virus and the way our lives have changed. But I’m not someone who can force it and it’s had to mull around inside for a while and now the ideas are creeping out from wherever they come from.

I had a spare cotton sheet hanging around, I bought the wrong size and I’ve been wondering what to do with it since. It’s a fitted sheet so I cut off the elasticated bits – they’re useful – and then cut a number of rectangles, 15 x 22 cms. The next stage is to carve a small lino block …… tomorrow probably …..

And I made a classic fish pie for tea. Proper comfort food. Suits the times we’re living in. There’s enough left over for tomorrow too. I love eating leftovers – waste not, want not as my Nana used to say xxx

So I’m finally getting some creative ideas from the pandemic lockdown and I’m getting my kit together to make a start this weekend. I’ll be starting with some sewing, using my lovely Edwardian Singer machine. I love it and use it a lot, it’s better than the electric machines I’ve had over the years. Singers have a metal plate with a serial number and you can look it up online to find the date. This one is from 1904, in the middle of the reign of Edward 7th.

See my print installations and more artwork by me and the gallery artists throughout March and April at The Workers Gallery in Ynyshir in The Rhondda Valley. It’s a great place to visit.

I’ve been a printmaker for a long while, I majored in Printmaking in Art College back at the end of the 1970s and my lecturer, Andy Charlton a fantastic artist, was proper old school. Nothing wrong with that, but in recent years I’ve become disillusioned with the conventional way of exhibiting prints, in a frame on a pristine wall in a gleaming white gallery.

I’ve always preferred art to be inclusive, rather than exclusive and so many galleries actively promote exclusivity, which puts a lot of people off even entering. And when someone does step over the doorstep, it’s very easy to walk by the rows of neatly framed artwork arranged on the pristine walls without stopping for a closer look or understanding the processes that have gone into the piece.

I’ve been trying to break out of the frame and display my printmaking in a way that develops a more interactive relationship with the viewer and also to move it into a viewing place that is more accessible than a conventional gallery. I’ve been experimenting with assembling multiple prints, starting with a work based on the cyanotype technique, a pattern for a Victorian corset and a series of sketchbook drawings of elder women.

I have exhibited them in sequence, hanging on a wall, and I also took it all apart and tied it to a clothes horse as you can see above. I really liked the clothes airer scenario so I decided to do another.

A while back, I had a small rubber stamp made up from a silkscreen print I did based on the fabulous Frida Kahlo, an artist I admire very much. I printed it onto small leftover pieces of a beautiful Japanese Shiohara paper that I had been using for another print job .

I had been wondering what to do with them and I finally decided on making them up into a self-contained installation. I made a start by sewing them onto a very robust handmade paper – 300gsm – that I’d bought at the Tate Gallery a few years ago on an antique Singer sewing machine.

And then I assembled them onto a clothes airer. People seem more willing to walk around something three-dimensional and they look at the work far more than when it’s in frames on a wall.

So far these works have been exhibited in an arts café, a conventional gallery, a pop-up artspace in a socially deprived area, and a shop window and will soon be going to The Workers Gallery in Ynyshir in the Rhondda Valley, a much-loved community-oriented artspace in what was, until the austerity cutbacks, the local library. The challenge now is to continue to break out of the frame and to find even more socially relevant places and ways to show my work.

A while back, I had a small rubber stamp made up from a silkscreen print I did based on the fabulous Frida Kahlo, an artist I admire very much. I printed it onto small leftover pieces of a beautiful Japanese Shiohara paper that I had been using for another print job.

I had been wondering what to do with them and I finally decided on making them up into a self-contained installation that I will be building over the next week.The first stage is to make them more robust – the Shiohara is a lightweight tissue and won’t take a lot of handling. However, it’s also a well-made natural fibre paper and can be sewn so I made a start by sewing them onto a very robust handmade paper – 300gsm – that I’d bought at the Tate Gallery a few years ago. I’d been wondering what to do with that as well! They really suit each other.

I’m sewing them on an antique Singer sewing machine. It’s Edwardian and dates from around 1904 and it’s a great piece of mechanical engineering as well as being extremely beautiful. It’s so finely balanced, it’s a joy to use. I’ll be carrying on with this in a couple of days, after the holiday.

So a very happy New Year to everyone, I really appreciate you looking in at my blog. Blwyddyn Newydd Dda i chi gyd.

A while back I began a new piece of artwork, quite an ambitious one using some of my sketchbook drawings of older women and a Victorian corset pattern to create a 3D piece in cyanotype, an archaic photographic technique. I cut the pieces from some lovely Somerset Velvet paper, 12 in all, and scanned and printed some of my drawings onto sheets of acetate (after reversing them in Photoshop so they are negatives). Yesterday, I coated the pieces of Somerset with the cyanotype chemicals and put them to dry overnight in a lightproof cupboard. And today I took them to Swansea Print Workshop to develop them in the UV Unit.

After exposing them for 6 minutes, I washed them face down to start the developing process then turned them over – you never know if it’s worked until this point. I’m delighted with them. They were drained for 10 minutes then I put them between sheets of tissue paper between low-density fibre drying boards.

Next step is to assemble them and get them ready for the exhibition. More about that tomorrow……..